On 17th January, David Bell, Head of Ofsted, delivered a widely reported lecture to the Hansard Society on the subject of British citizenship and how best our schools should be deployed so as to turn out good citizens, especially now they are required to teach citizenship.
Mr Bell’s wide-ranging speech touched on a number of different aspects of this thorny subject.
Most media attention was directed to the concerns voiced by Mr Bell about the likely socially divisive consequences of the rapid growth of faith schools, especially Muslim ones, unless they ‘adapt their curriculum to ensure that it … helps [pupils] acquire an appreciation of and respect for other cultures in a way that promotes tolerance and harmony’.
Mr Bell’s concerns here have been greeted with great protestation by British Muslims. Dr Monhmaed Mukadam, chairman of the Association of Muslims Schools, has accused Mr Bell of Islamophobia by singling out only Muslim schools as potential seed-beds of sectarianism.
Whether, in having drawn special attention to the potential divisiveness of Muslim schools alone among faith schools, Mr Bell is guilty of having incited hatred of a religious group is an issue on which, perhaps, we can await instruction from the courts after the government’s bill making incitement to religious hatred a crime has completed its passage through parliament.
My bet is that no English court would ever so regard Mr Bell’s lecture, although it might well do so if exactly the same sentiments were put less guardedly or by some less reputable establishment figure, something which, in itself, should give any classical liberal who values equality before the law cause for concern.
However, there was something else said by Mr Bell in his lecture that to date has gone un-remarked on by the media that should be of far greater and more immediate cause for concern to classical liberals than anything he has said about the need for faith schools to adopt curricula that inculcate tolerance and respect for others.
From a classical liberal point of view, what is truly alarming in Mr Bell’s lecture is the account given there of what all schools should be aiming to impart in their pupils by way of an understanding of their common British heritage as citizens and of why, in virtue of such a common heritage, such citizenship should be valued and cherished. The contentious passage in question in Mr Bell’s lecture goes as follows:
‘We must not allow our recognition of diversity to become apathy in the face of any challenge to our coherence as a nation. I would go further and say that an awareness of our common heritage as British citizens, equal under the law, should enable us to assert with confidence that we are intolerant of intolerance, illiberalism and attitudes and values that demean the place of certain sections of our community, be they women or people living in non-traditional relationships.’
What is deeply disturbing here is that someone in so powerful a position of authority as Mr Bell, should, in a lecture about British citizenship and why British citizens should value it, have equated tolerance under a common law, which is a major feature of Britain’s national heritage and has made Britain such a tolerant and liberal society, with ‘intolerance of intolerance, illiberalism and attitudes and values that demean the place of certain sections of our community.’
Doubtless, it is possible for the British school system to foster national cohesion through teaching its pupils to be ‘intolerant’ of any but liberal attitudes. Were it to do this, however, it would not have and could not have made them genuinely liberal nor appreciative of their British national heritage which has always involved tolerating those not liberal in their outlook, provided any illiberalism in outlook is confined to the sphere of thought, not action.
What, therefore, should be of especial concern to classical liberals in Mr Bell’s remarks is its implicit message that all those who are unwilling to celebrate diversity and espouse politically correct attitudes that embrace the government’s understanding of racial equality, affirmative action, and multiculturalism, etc., are not to be tolerated in tomorrow’s schools or allowed to disseminate their own outlooks.
It is, thus not so much British Muslims but classical liberals who have greater cause to take alarm at this clear warning of the Bell.
Comments (2)
The totalitarianism of the state in a country like ours isn't evil in intent, but evil in practice. We need fewer people to make things, grow food or to administer banks and insurance companies as technology does a lot of that for us. Parkinson's Law means that the state has to create lots of non-jobs to take up the slack. We should bite the bullet, and pay people to do nothing rather than pay them to over-govern us.
Posted by ed | January 22, 2005 8:01 PM
Posted on January 22, 2005 20:01
I am relieved that classical liberals are starting to notice that the whole Multi-Racial ideal has been imposed on an innocent public and backed up with totalitarian laws. It seriously undermines our democratic system. In fact I think it was developed outside democracy and forced on us or we were called "fascists", "Nazis" and "racists" to cow us down.
Posted by David Hamilton | January 21, 2005 10:30 AM
Posted on January 21, 2005 10:30